The shiniest new toys in the NFL last season were the option-style offenses that the Washington Redskins, San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks used to help unveil their young quarterbacks as dual-threat, running-and-passing dynamos.

But are those toys, now dented and scuffed and no longer resembling the latest-and-greatest thing, already headed for the discount bin?

A quarter of the way into the new season, it is clear that NFL defenses have come up with some of the answers that eluded them last season when option offenses were becoming such a craze. Two of the teams that thrived the most a year ago with such offensive approaches, the Redskins with Robert Griffin III and the 49ers with Colin Kaepernick, are struggling with their quarterbacks in their second seasons as starters. League-wide, the average gain per rushing attempt on option plays has dropped by nearly a yard.

“People are defending the read option better across the entire league,” said Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the Redskins and Houston Texans.

According to Ben Stockwell, the director of analysis for the website ProFootballFocus, option-play runs league-wide this season had gained an average of 4.9 yards through last weekend’s play, down from 5.8 yards per attempt last season. The Redskins are averaging 3.9 yards per option rush, down from last season’s six yards per attempt, according to Stockwell’s figures. The 49ers have plummeted from 4.5 yards per option run last season to 1.1 yards this season.

Redskins fullback Darrel Young said that defenses “absolutely” are playing the option differently and better than last season, and added: “They’re doing a good job of trying to stop it. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know what they’re talking about. But they’re doing a good job.”

Said former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso: “I do think they’re playing it better. It’s not a strategic problem. It’s never been that. It’s an execution issue.”

The problem for defenses, which was particularly acute last season when the option offenses first became so fashionable, was that “it’s not a play that NFL defenses tend to see,” Kelso said. In addition, he said, “You don’t have scout teams that can replicate it in practice.”

Kelso said that, in his view, defenses have a few viable approaches against the option, the simplest of which is to move a safety close to the line of scrimmage to provide an additional defender against the run.

“You pretty much have to devote an extra defender to stop the read option,” Kelso said by phone. “If you do that, you become vulnerable on the back end. I don’t know that it’s difficult for defensive coordinators to devise a way to stop it. It’s whether you can execute it after you come up with your way to stop it. And it’s whether the offense takes advantage of where you’ve left yourself vulnerable.”

Those comments echo the remarks made recently by Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, who said the league’s option-style offenses are “not shocking people” as they did last season, when “a lot of people weren’t ready for it at all” and “it was easy at times.” Shanahan said it was clear that defensive coaches were “gonna work all offseason, find a way to stop it” after the attention the Redskins, 49ers and Seahawks received last season. “And when teams are completely committed to stopping something,” he said, “I don’t care what it is, they’re gonna stop it.”

The Redskins aren’t alone. The 49ers, after reaching the Super Bowl last season after Kaepernick took over as the starter, are just 2-2 this season. Kaepernick is averaging 5.4 yards per rush, down from 6.6 last season, and has a passer rating of 81, down from 98.3 last season. Even the Seahawks, who are 4-0 with second-year quarterback Russell Wilson, are having less success on option runs, generating 5.4 yards per attempt this season after getting 7.5 yards per try last season, according to the ProFootballFocus data.

“Robert Griffin is dealing with the same thing that Colin Kaepernick is dealing with,” said Randy Cross, a former offensive lineman for the 49ers. “NFL defenses have decided, it appears, if you see the read option, your job is to go full speed for that guy. You’re going to go get that guy. So as a quarterback, you’re going to have to figure out if you want to keep dealing with that, or if you’re gonna make a go of it as a pocket passer.”

The Philadelphia Eagles have had the most option-style rushing attempts in the league this season and are averaging 7.1 yards per attempt. But there is a freshness to what the Eagles are doing, given that their option plays come within the context of the fast-break offense of their new coach, Chip Kelly. The Eagles lead the NFL in rushing offense and are ranked second in total offense.

Redskins defensive coordinator Jim Haslett said that an option-style offense “doesn’t surprise people as much as it did last season,” but added: “Look at Philadelphia. That’s new and they’re pretty much leading the league in offense.”

The decline in productivity of the option offenses has come in a 2013 season in which passing numbers have exploded. That has intensified the notion that the option-style offenses are so 2012. Could the read option be headed the way of the Wildcat offense, a short-lived NFL fad from the sport’s recent past?

Not so fast, some say, contending that option elements can remain an effective part of an offense.

“Once we get our regular running game going, we’ll be fine,” Young said after a recent Redskins practice. “It just takes time. You could see it didn’t really start developing until the end of the year last year when it started to really become popular with San Fran and Seattle and all those teams.”

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